Posts Tagged‘Recent Reads’

Home » Recent Reads » Page 23

Thursday’s Work-in-Progress

by Erika Dreifus on
Disabled


As you know, I’m on vacation from the day job this week and attempting a self-organized, stay-right-here-in-NYC writing retreat of sorts. But I’d never abandon my routine altogether, so our June newsletter has gone out to subscribers right on schedule.

If you subscribe, you already know about the featured Q&A with Midge Raymond, whose most recent book is Everyday Writing: Tips and Prompts to Fit Your Regularly Scheduled Life. And you’ve already learned that prompts and exercises are crucial to the book.

I’ve been a fan of the prompts that Midge shares on her blog for quite awhile, so I wasn’t surprised to find myself eager to try the ones she has placed in the book. I can vouch for their appeal and flexibility.

In fact, Jane Friedman recently posted a sampling of these Everyday Writing exercises online, so you can go ahead and check them out for yourself pretty easily.

You’ll notice that one of the prompts reads as follows:

“Describe what you looked like at the age of five.”

This is one of the first prompts I tackled when I read my review copy. What I remembered and wrote inspired me to dig up my kindergarten photo this week. Now, I want to try the prompt again. And I just may do exactly that before this “retreat” is over.

Thursday’s Work-in-Progress: All About Book Reviewing

by Erika Dreifus on
Disabled
SOME of the print galleys and advance reading copies (ARCs) awaiting my attention.

I have book reviewing on the brain right now.

Part of that is due to the number of reviews I’ve been writing lately (and the assignments remaining yet-to-checked-off my to-do list). Part of it might have to do with two of my recent reviews having appeared online within the past few days. One of those reviews looks at Natasha Solomons’s new novel, The House at Tyneford, and the other was assigned to note the paperback release of Johanna Adorján’s An Exclusive Love: A Memoir (trans. Anthea Bell).

And part of is surely connected with the survey I’ve devised for book reviewers/book bloggers who use NetGalley.

That last item is something I devised to help me with an article-in-progress in which I’m writing about NetGalley’s usefulness to me (and others). If you’re a reviewer/blogger who has used or is using NetGalley, I’d be so grateful if you’d take a few moments and complete the survey. It’s quick and painless, I promise! Thank you in advance for your time, and thanks to those of you who have already participated.

From My Bookshelf: The House at Tyneford, by Natasha Solomons

by Erika Dreifus on
Disabled

My latest book review has just appeared on The Jewish Journal‘s website. Here’s how it begins:

Natasha Solomons is a British writer whose first novel, published in the United States in 2010 as “Mr. Rosenblum Dreams in English,” should have received a wider readership. Inspired by the experience of the author’s grandparents, European Jews who fled Nazism for safety in England, that novel focused largely on the challenges and conflicts of assimilation. In the recently published “The House at Tyneford” (Plume, $15), Solomons returns to the Jewish refugee experience in England in the 1930s.

Read the rest here.

Thursday’s Work-in-Progress: Introducing My New Column

by Erika Dreifus on
2

Last week’s posts–about my day job and about how and where to locate forthcoming books for review–proved very popular. Thank you all for the comments, shares, RTs, and other indications of your interest! I hope that you’ll be pleased to know that today’s “work-in-progress” post takes up some of the threads from last week’s items. And that’s because I’m about to introduce a new “extra-curricular” writing activity grounded in my reviewing practice: a “First Looks” blog series/column for Fiction Writers Review, where I’m honored to be a contributing editor.

As the first post–which went live yesterday–explains: “This series, which I’ll be writing each month, will introduce you to soon-to-be released novels and short-story collections that have piqued my interest as a reader-who-writes. Consider it a public “to be read” announcement of sorts, a way for me to point out a new title (or two) every month and explain what about it has caught my eye. For the most part, we’ll be concentrating on books that fall within FWR’s chief interest: fiction by emerging authors.”

So go ahead. Take a peek and see which soon-to-released titles made it into the inaugural post (and why). Hope you enjoy!

From My Bookshelf: AMERICAN DERVISH, by Ayad Akhtar

by Erika Dreifus on
6

In a “Dear Reader” note on his website, author Ayad Akhtar writes:

Growing up in the “heartland,” I became acutely aware that my peers didn’t know what to make of Islam. It wasn’t ignorance; they were good, smart people. They’d just never been exposed to it. Since then, exposure to Islam has grown, for all the wrong reasons.

In writing American Dervish I wanted to share my sense of Islam in America. To render for the reader Islam’s beauty, its simplicity, and vivid spirituality. All of which I wanted to express in an American setting, in an American idiom.

But as with so many religions, Islam’s beauty comes with troubling traditions. In writing the book, one of things I discovered was that I could not write about Islam truthfully without also exposing the fuller spectrum of my experience in Muslim-America.

A few days ago, I finished reading American Dervish. It is an important and provocative novel, and I recommend it highly. I’m still thinking about it. In particular–and not surprisingly for a blog post appearing on My Machberet–I’m thinking of how to respond to this question in the “Reader’s Guide” section of Akhtar’s website: “What did you think of the relationship between Islam and Judaism in the novel?” (more…)